News

Art Center to undergo $7 million renovation

Kids' wing, building upgrades and exhibit-hall improvements among plans approved

Plans for a $7 million Palo Alto Art Center renovation include a new children's wing featuring an outdoor classroom (bottom right) and a mini parking lot with entrance from Newell Road (at right). Rendering by Mark Cavagnero Associates, courtesy of the City of Palo Alto.

The nearly 40-year-old Palo Alto Art Center will be getting a mid-life revamp -- a long-awaited $7 million facility upgrade slated to begin next April.

Plans, conditionally approved by the city's Architectural Review Board Thursday, include the creation of a children's wing and new courtyard, air-circulation and building-code upgrades, plus exhibition-hall and aesthetic improvements.

"When it opened in 1971, the Art Center was intended to be primarily a place for adults, but now more than half our visitors are kids," she said.

"We serve around 7,000 children a year and we're really bursting at the seams," she added, describing long lines of paint-covered kids patiently waiting for the sole sink (installed much higher than is easily reachable for children) in one of the rooms used for classes. She said new sinks would be kid-friendly and foot-operated.

Louise Carroll, a Palo Alto Art Center Foundation board member, gestured around the cramped, windowless room on a recent summer day near closing time. "It's like a cave; it's kind of stifling. They're really cramped in here. Storage is an issue, everything's an issue," she said.

The new plans call for a doubling of classroom space (from two rooms to four), plus the addition of a courtyard where summer camps and outdoor classes can gather, including a room designed for preschoolers.

The artwork itself will be better served by the renovation, too, Kienzle said. The building is the former home of the city hall and was not designed for the needs of a modern art gallery.

"It's very claustrophobic in here," she said, referring to the exhibit hall, which formerly housed the secretarial office. "The low ceiling even limits which sculptures we're able to house."

Though new lights were installed when the building became the Art Center, that was so long ago that replacements are no longer available. Plans to install museum-quality lighting will put the center on the road to accreditation from the American Association of Museums. Removing the existing false ceiling, exposing the beams, ripping out the carpet and restoring the concrete floor will also go a long way toward making the space better-suited for exhibiting artwork, Kienzle said.

Currently the building has no air conditioning, forcing it to close on hot days due to health hazards and making for unbearably stuffy conditions at events such as exhibit receptions, she said.

"Gallery shows on a hot spring night are incredibly uncomfortable. For years people have been asking, 'Can't you do something?'" Kienzle said. A new HVAC system will take care of heating and cooling, which will also better protect the artwork housed there.

The center will also be brought up to code with the Americans with Disabilities Act, complying with doorway and restroom regulations, making all entrances more accessible to those in wheelchairs.

The electrical system is also slated for an update.

"We blow fuses when just using standard equipment, even a coffee maker," Carroll said, laughing, as Kienzle maneuvered around a blackboard and chairs to access the antiquated circuit panel used to control the overhead lights.

San Francisco-based architect Mark Cavagnero, who also designed the Community School for Music and Arts in Mountain View, is handling the project.

"He's really an inspiring individual and specializes in public buildings," Kienzle said, adding that his design plans are meant to integrate smoothly into the existing "old ranch" style of the building. Renderings are available at the city's website.

Landscape-architecture firm SWA, which designed the green "living roof" at the California Academy of Sciences, has been hired for the outdoor improvements.

The renovation, which is aiming for the environmental "LEED silver" certification, will include many eco-friendly features, including wraparound decks made of recycled woods, rubber and cork, and counters incorporating recycled paper.

It will require the removal of 15 trees, including two dying magnolias, though Kienzle said the city is committed to replacing trees at a 2:1 ratio.

"Any that we don't have room to plant here we will donate to the Main Library next door," she said. Several public and neighborhood meetings and an arborist walk-through were held regarding the tree-removal plans.

Original renovation plans called for an expansion of the sculpture garden and a new fence, but those aspects were removed in order to focus on more immediate needs, Kienzle said.

However, the lobby will be redesigned to be more welcoming to visitors, and an enclosure will be built to hide the "unsightly" Dumpsters and trash bins. A new entrance from Newell Road, including 20-minute parking spaces for parents dropping off students, will be created.

The art center will be closed for a year starting in April, with staff members performing outreach and holding classes and events at alternative locations, such as Cubberley and Lucie Stern community centers during the closure.

The estimated cost for the project is $7 million, with the city paying for the electrical, mechanical and building-code upgrades and nonprofit group the Palo Alto Art Center Foundation funding the children's wing and improvements to the exhibition gallery.

"The public-private partnership between the city and the foundation is really wonderful and indicative of how well the city can work with individuals," Kienzle said.

"These upgrades will greatly enhance the community's experience."

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Comments

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Posted by Another Waste Of City Money
a resident of Embarcadero Oaks/Leland
on Aug 20, 2010 at 10:58 am

Why can't the Art Center be sold to "private interests". Given the huge infrastructure backlog ($500M-$600M), every public dollar spent on "art" has to be seen as irresponsible.

Most people in Palo Alto don't use this facility. Why should the Palo Alto taxpayers be funding this center for people who don't live here?

Posted by neighbor
a resident of another community
on Aug 20, 2010 at 2:24 pm

Dear "Another waste" resident

You say..."Most people in Palo Alto don't use this facility. Why should the Palo Alto taxpayers be funding this center for people who don't live here?" Pretty narrow-minded and selfish. Why does SF fund it's museums and other cultural center?

Often it sounds as if some PA residents want to close their borders. The self-centered attitude that is sometimes on these pages is tiresome.

By the way --- I saw 100s of locals taking advantage of Stanford's free MemChu concerts the other night. I thought it was nice....a community event for the whole community, the University, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and beyond.

I have a question: how can a building be LEED-certified and have an air-conditioning system? I thought CEILING FANS were what we should all be using.

Is this another case of the City telling residents to do one thing, while it itself does another? An example: residents shouldn't use pesticides and herbicides on their lawns, BUT recently we learned from the Weekly that all parks are sprayed with those toxic chemicals except the little park near Alma & Oregon Expressway! I myself haven't used chemicals for years and years, but I resent that the City does.

Posted by South PA Resident
a resident of Midtown
on Aug 20, 2010 at 7:05 pm

Just another freebie for North Palo Alto. First the Children's library is rebuilt, then the Children's Zoo is expanded, then it's $1.3 per year for the Children's Theater. Now it's the Art's Center getting $4.5 Million so it too can be renovated with most of the money being spent to build facilities for the children.

Do you notice a pattern here. All those greedy people from North Palo Alto have to say to Council is: "It's for the children", and they get a vastly disproportionate amount of our tax dollars compared to South Palo Alto.

Meanwhile to get the Mitchell Park library rebuilt we have to pay for a $75 Million bond measure. Oh yes, Downtown and Main will take a lot of that money too.

When they say more than 2/3rds of Palo Alto's tax dollars are spent in North Palo Alto, they're not kidding.

Posted by Philistine
a resident of Professorville
on Aug 20, 2010 at 8:48 pm

Why spend money on art, music, film, theatre, or any of the fine or performing arts? What a waste of tax money. All public money should be spent to fill potholes and other practical things like that. What does the life of the mind matter anyway? Keep taxes way way down. Forget about the arts. People think too much anyway. Who needs to be inspired?

Posted by no kidding
a resident of Midtown
on Aug 21, 2010 at 12:21 am

South PA Resident,
You hit a nerve. I'm really upset that in redoing the Mitchell Park Library, they won't even be adding a permanent stage so that there will be a somewhat reasonable performance space on this side of town. (Even though it wouldn't be THAT difficult or even relatively very expensive to add one.) I voted for the bond because I thought COMMUNITY CENTER would mean something more comparable to what they have on the other side of town, not just a newer version of the pathetic and limited function space we have here now.

Why is there never any money to properly remodel fire stations? Look closely. Some built in the 50's and are now so outdated the engines barely fit in them. Antennas scrape going in and out while money is wasted counting the cities trees. The importance and necessity of many city projects should be re-prioritized but that falls to the politicians and the ones running the city don't have the strength and the nerve to tell the citizens they can't have everything they want.

7 MM is too much for art or art education -- obvious priorities are things in which every member of the community has an interest: safety, sanitation, education basic social services and public works as needed. In a time of retrenchment for many, 7 MM for art is absurd. It is not fair to tax the community as a whole to support as a public good projects that are not of general interest. If there are private philanthropic donors who would support this, let them lead the way so that the toll on the public is MUCH less. And defer the public component until times are more secure.

Posted by neighbor
a resident of another community
on Aug 24, 2010 at 6:13 pm

To "No!"
Read the end of the article -- PA is not paying for the whole project. only code items.....
"The estimated cost for the project is $7 million, with the city paying for the electrical, mechanical and building-code upgrades and nonprofit group the Palo Alto Art Center Foundation funding the children's wing and improvements to the exhibition gallery.

"The public-private partnership between the city and the foundation is really wonderful and indicative of how well the city can work with individuals," Kienzle said.

Posted by Another childcare center
a resident of Community Center
on Aug 24, 2010 at 6:21 pm

Sharing the cost sounds good until the goes up up up, like it did at Lytton Plaza. When the promoters there had the city's promise to pay half, the cost went up by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The city needs to put a cap on its share.

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